Microservices

NOT ON THE CURRENT EDITION

This blip is not on the current edition of the radar. If it was on one of the last few editions it is likely that it is still relevant. If the blip is older it might no longer be relevant and our assessment might be different today. Unfortunately, we simply don't have the bandwidth to continuously review blips from previous editions of the radar.Understand more

Jan 2014

trial?

We are seeing an uptick in adoption of microservices as a technique for distributed system design, both in ThoughtWorks and in the wider community. Frameworks such as Dropwizard and practices like declarative provisioning point to a maturing of the technologies and tools. Avoiding the usual monolithic approach and being sympathetic to the need to replace parts of systems individually has important positive implications for the total cost of ownership of systems. We see this as having greatest impact in the mid-to-long term, specifically with respect to the two-to-five year rewrite cycle.

May 2013

trial?

Oct 2012

trial?

Mar 2012

assess?

Microservices, often deployed out-of-container or using an embedded HTTP server, are a move away from traditional large technical services. This approach trades benefits such as maintainability for additional operational complexity. These drawbacks are typically addressed using infrastructure automation and continuous deployment techniques. On balance, microservices are an effective way of managing technical debt and handling different scaling characteristics especially when deployed in a service oriented architecture built around business capabilities.

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